Halestorm Guitarist: ‘If Music Was a City, Rock Would Be Down in the Ghetto’

There's been a running idea about rock in recent years that the genre has been on a downturn, flying under the radar and neglected by the mainstream. Halestorm guitarist Joe Hottinger agrees with the notion, but in a new interview has decided to look on the bright side of the argument.

"If music was a city, rock would be down in the ghetto; nobody really pays attention to us down here," he tells the podcast Binge Thinking (listen to the full interview below). "And it's okay, we don't need it. And honestly, I'm so glad that we're a rock band. We have friends that are in pop bands that get a big hit, and their career kind of lasts for two years; they disappear and they're gone and they're just filled with disappointment and regret. We've been slowly growing for 20 years straight now and working, and we have a career, because rock fans are the best fans...they keep coming."

Halestorm frontwoman Lzzy Hale echoed Hottinger's sentiments, saying the band wanted to "double down" on the rock genre with their latest album, Vicious, which came out over the summer.

"'Cause it's not just about something that's catchy on the radio," Hale says. "This is a primal need. This genre is so special and it's so close to our hearts. So we just really wanted to, on this record, just double down on that...it's gonna be us and it's gonna be rock and it's gonna just accentuate everything that we love about the genre."

To further his point, Hottinger brought up the snafu during the 2017 Grammy Awards where Megadeth won "Best Metal Performance" during a part of the event that isn't televised. Yet instead of playing a song by the group, the Grammy house band went into Metallica's "Master of Puppets," seen as an even bigger slight due to frontman Dave Mustaine's noted acrimony with Metallica, who kicked him out of the band in 1983.

"Like we said earlier, rock is down, people aren't paying attention to us down here, and it's kind of how we like it," Hottinger says. "We do our own thing with this genre, and just 'cause these guys who run the band at the Grammy pre-telecast, they don't care enough to learn that difference. That's why it'll always be ours and us folks down here living it and loving it."

Halestorm is currently on tour in Europe, performing tonight (Sept. 20) at The Telegraph Building in Ireland. Then in November, they return to the States for a run of shows which continues through December. A full list of dates can be found at this location.

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